Got the iPhone 16 Pro today and the screen is alot less bright than my 15 Pro using the same brightness settings. Auto brightness and reduce white point are both off, top picture iphone 15 is on the left. Bottom picture is from a guy that commented on my
reddit thread, he was able to photograph the difference at max brightness the iphone 16 is the one on the left. Is this a bad display or a software glitch?
View attachment 2424595
View attachment 2424658
I am an iPhone user since the first generation having every other year for a few years and in the recent 5 to 7 years new phone every year.
Longtime Apple user. Similar to a few other posts here I observe with my new 16 promax that at minimum brightness, the one nit is clearly dimmer than my 15 promax.
unlike another users post regarding equivalence at 35% brightness, for me, I get approximately the same brightness at around 50% for each device and very nearly identical brightness at 100%. This was done indoors with auto brightness turned off, true tone on and or off for each identically and reducing Whitepoint not enabled
It does seem like they're dimmer throughout a portion of the spectrum but also as another user mentioned the scale or range is different so a lower minimum brightness means the calculation for 25% brighhhtness for total brightness spectrum/range range that goes down to a lower value likely means that the determination of 25% for the 16 pro max results in a lower actual brightness than the 15 promax but relative battery use and things like that it's probable that if you have to turn it up to what is classified as 35 or 50% equal your 15 pro max the battery drain will be the same or less with a more efficient processor etc. etc.
Not sure, but that does seem probable.
Also, like another user posted about the screens getting dimmer sometimes year over year.... there have been years, in fact, I think when I got my 15 promax, it seem notably dimmer than my 14 promax, but as it shipped and was received out of the box the reduced white point was enabled unexpectedly. once I discovered that it was a default setting out of the box and corrected it, they became equivalent
On the other hand, I don't see why the reduction in minimum brightness from 1 nit to whatever may might've been 2 or 4 ( I'm not sure if it was ever published ) will result in such a wild difference in computation of % brightness under 50%.
So a couple of things, anyone can call 1-800-my-apple, select technical support option and ask the famous question of whether that's "expected behavior" and to get an explanation to feel like you have some level of certainty with what's expected......although Apple advisors sometimes give completely incorrect information- my experience over many years despite the hopes or assumption they know everything about their products.... that's not always the case.
to agree with various other posts It seems like if you achieve the same maximum brightness for each device and there's a crossover point below which they begin to diverge at the lower end of the spectrum, you probably have a device that's fine and all you need to do is adjust it to the new determination of whatever percent makes sense relative to your particular brightness preference without any likely degradation of battery life despite the fact that might be displayed as a higher percentage.
Like other users I also tell Siri to adjust my brightness to 1% or 50% or 35% so I'm not using the slider
if across all ranges of the spectrum, it's substantially dimmer, and your settings are all equalized then it seems more likely you have a display that's not achieving the intended brightness. Further, if other users are experiencing a identical max brightness and identical brightness, somewhere closer to the mid range of the spectrum for each of two devices, it's not necessarily a software thing, but more likely a hardware thing because otherwise everyone would achieve a lower brightness across the spectrum but some of us aren't. we might all like for 25% to be the same across the board. It probably will not be in this case.
Open to anyone suggestions or comments on this? It's kind of a consolidation of several other post, putting the one place with the attempt to provide slightly more explanation in a few sentences others have provided. Hope it's helpful. If anyone calls Apple to confirm expected behavior that would be nice to add to the post.